Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/165

 type, a persuasion that any character, viewed sympathetically, will seem, or will actually become, as admirable as any other character.

One illustration may be found in the stories of the underworld, where the professional criminal or wrongdoer is shown in the final paradox to be essentially righteous and permanently reformed. We are convinced, of course, that to be a professional crook will in the end lead to some moral deterioration. We read with pleasure, however, these fables which keep the soul of the crook unspotted from his own conduct. Our pleasure is based on a fine humaneness, on the undoubted fact that criminals are largely manufactured or at least encouraged by circumstances, and that few of them were originally bad at heart. But this doctrine, excellent as a vantage-point from which to enter upon social